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cops excluded
(quokk.au)
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this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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Police are modern. They came into existence after the United States did.
Before that, people relied on the community - if one person was stolen from, the community considered it a collective responsibility to address the issue.
If it was an issue between two people in the community, a trusted person would mediate. Sometimes this was someone in a leadership role, but other times it was Taylor from down the road, because they want someone who is always calm, fair, and reasonable, and both people trust Taylor.
Just like there are lots of other things police currently handle that they shouldn't, like people having a mental health crisis.
The first contracted law enforcement was in the early 1600s in Scotland, unless my random 2am fixation on the history of how shitty cops are is wrong.
And a quick search tells me 1611 in Edinburgh.
Cops have been bastards for longer than the US has been around.
Ehhh I'd call that a foundational element and not policing as we'd consider it to be today. It was a very limited scope (known criminals, enforcing curfews, and dealing with riots).
Modern policing would be more London in the 1830s as the first police force, with American policing in the 1840s and beyond, with the american roots in the slave patrols from the 1700s.
Earlier models were more based on the mutual pledge system, with groups of families (tithings) have an assigned tithingman, with groups of tithings (a hundred). This became the basis of the constable.